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Most people, particularly those who grew up in the 80's and 90's for some reason, claim a certain music album as “the album of my childhood/teenage years/high school experience/barmitzvuh/whatever”. It's an album that was usually forced on them by older siblings as they received car rides or whatever, and for whatever reason it is always and forever connected to times in their younger life and the memories thereof. Mine was They Might Be Giants' 1990 album “Flood”.

Another defining moment in my life was about a year and a half ago when They Might Be Giants came out to Salt Lake and gave a free concert. You could only win tickets on the radio, and despite trying, I never got through to get them, but they must've had a bunch left since they announced a couple hours before the concert that the DJ's would be there giving out tickets at the door. I dragged Paige along and we made it to the concert. Standing in a club in Salt Lake singing along amidst the calmest, nerdiest concert audience to “Birdhouse in Your Soul” while the Johns sang with us on stage was one of those moments that, by my definition, I would call life-defining.

And so this weekend, when I laid under the Turkish sun on the pillowed roof of our hostel staring up at the clouds billowing wistfully over Istanbul and listened several times to They Might Be Giants' “Istanbul, Not Constantinople”, I couldn't help but remember my childhood, think of the album my older brother sent down through all of my siblings ending with me, Michigan lake house trips, Tiny Toons cartoons, last-minute Salt Lake concerts, and what in the crap I was doing listening to They Might Be Giants in freaking ISTANBUL.

Pictures will be up on flickr as soon as I can go through them all. Enjoy the dramatic effect, and I'll explain later.